DONTBuy.com!
Written: Dec 14 '01
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The Bottom Line
There's no reason to buy at Buy.com - the prices aren't the lowest on the Internet and they don't have a phone number to call if there are problems!
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| Full Review |
I'm foolish. I'll admit that upfront. I should have known after buying from "BUY.COM" a few times that I shouldn't buy again...but then, I had to have that digital camera...
Let me start from the very beginning. I started buying at buy.com approx 1.5 years ago. I bought software without a problem. The shipping was SUPER fast (1-2 days!). I then bought a scanner. It arrived safely, but I was really glad that I picked it up at UPS because it was sent in the manufacturer's box. YES...that box that has the HUGE product pictures on it advertising "Scanner inside, please steal me". At that time, I informed buy.com that while I lived in a safe neighborhood, I felt that double boxing (putting the product inside a plain brown box) was appropriate for such a product.
Then, last Christmas I ordered a home theatre system. To my horror, I came home and found it sitting there on my porch...again, not double boxed! I had assumed that UPS would be smart enough to leave a notice and not leave the box (especially when it was covered in color photos of the speakers and components!). I guess I was so excited that when I ordered it from buy.com, I forgot the earlier scanner incident. Well...silly me, I attributed blame to UPS for being irresponsible to leave such an item on the doorstep on Dec 21!
That brings us to today. Last week, I had this idea to get a digital camera for Christmas. I poked around and researched and found my dream camera. I priced the camera and the low prices were around $314+$25 shipping. Buy.com and Amazon wanted $379, no shipping. Local stores want $399+8.25% sales tax. I'm familiar with the cheap camera stores and some of their tricks. They often sell gray market goods (illegal imports) at dirt cheap prices. Then you discover there's no warranty since the product wasn't intended to be sold in the US. So...I decided to buy from buy.com, figuring that I'd receive a brand new product. You know...factory sealed, I'm the first one to break open the packages. In other words...NEW!
I got my camera fast...2 days later! I was excited. This time, my camera was double boxed (thank heavens!). I eagerly open the camera box and discover an invoice...for SOMEONE ELSE who lives in California (name, address everything). Not only that, this invoice listed DELL COMPUTERS as the seller of the product to the guy in California. I got suspicious and started examining the packaging...all opened and taped with scotch tape! EEK!
So...that's when I go to call buy.com to tell them what I think of their camera of unknown origin, only to find that they have NO CUSTOMER SERVICE PHONE NUMBER! Nope...you MUST send an email. To their credit, they promise a response within 12 hours and they did follow through. But their responses are canned and essentially they apologized for enclosing the wrong invoice and emailed a new one. I replied that they missed the whole point...the invoice wasn't theirs, it was dated in October (it wasn't a slip up on the packer's part), the packaging was opened and the camera was clearly a USED or refurbished product.
In my mind, I was buying a NEW product at a reasonable cost. If I had bought from the $314 place and received such an item, I would think that I had tried to get "something for nothing" and I should have known. But being $20 cheaper than the local store does not indicate to me that this might be a refurbished product!!!
Certainly, I wouldn't have bought from them if I had known that there was no customer service phone anymore (they said that it was discontinued in Feb 2001).
I certainly won't be spending my money at buy.com ever again! But if you dare...buy only packaged products such as videos, dvd, software, not things that people return and need warranties like cameras, computer equipment and the like.
Recommended:
No
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About the Author
Reviews written: 18
Trusted by: 1 member
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